Thursday, September 11, 2008

Stay Tuned - Review

The 1992 film Stay Tuned, probably the oddest film the late John Ritter ever appeared in. Still feels so weird saying "late" in front of his name, doesn't it? Anyway, John is Roy Knable, on-the-verge-of-being-divorced father of two and devout television (and fencing) fanatic. One night after a trophy related mishap his beloved TV becomes smashed. As luck would have it late-night door to door television salesman Spike arrives at his door - almost immediately after his old TV (let's call her Lucille) bites it - with the bitchin-est TV and massive satellite dish 1992 had to offer, at an unbeatable price. On the house.

Of course Spike is no ordinary late-night door to door television salesman, he's actually the Unlord Almighty. Or Satan, if you will. And this is no ordinary television, it's a....telEVILision (right?) featuring 666 cable channels from hell. 666, The Number of Channels of The Beast. Through a series of wacky shenanigans Roy and his wife Helen end up sucked into the massive satellite dish, right into the very programs that are airing. All live, all the time, apparently. They have to survive 24 hours bouncing from evil TV show to evil TV show or they have to surrender their eternal souls to Spike. It's kind of like Pleasantville, only with more Satan. And wrestlers. In addition to Ritter the film also stars Jeffrey Jones as Spike (aka Lucifer), Eugene Levy as Crowley (Evil!) and the legendary Don Calfa as Wetzel.

It's a pretty weird movie and one I wouldn't mind seeing remade. It's a decent enough movie, but some of the humor falls pretty flat, especially now, over 15 years later with dated Northern Exposure or Wayne's World references. Of course now it'd probably look a lot like those mercilessly horrible "________ Movies" they are churning out twice a year now. I think someone like Michael Gondry or God-willing, Terry Gilliam might be able to have a decent go at it.

5 comments:

This soundtrack marks the point where I officially fell off the rap/hip-hop bandwagon.

I was feelin' the love from The Sugarhill Gang, then Slick Rick,and Doug E. Fresh.... I hung in there with Run DMC and LL Cool J... and I even liked some of the folks on this album (1992)- Black Sheep for instance had some good stuff.

For me it all kind of jumped the shark with eminem, who appeared shortly after this album. And by the time folks like Ludacris made it big, I was long gone.

I've loved the soundtracks you've uploaded many times and I finally got around to doing one upload myself. If you're keen on 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' and are looking for the extended soundtrack, feel free to stop on by my blog and pick it up! Keep up the amazing work, and love love LOVE the custom dvd covers.

I cannot tell you how long I've been looking for a copy of this soundtrack. It's very hard to find and I don't think this movie was that popular until it hit cable later on in '93 or '94. I used to play the credits over and over because I loved The Mic Stalker and Taste.